


MAG ### - Fandom

by haloghost



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Meta, Metafiction, Not Canon Compliant, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), POV Outsider, Statement Fic, canon typical 'i think our experience of the universe has value', characters becoming self aware, complete disregard for canon timeline, it’s just a lot of meta and it gets more and more meta each chapter that’s really all this is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:46:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23687137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloghost/pseuds/haloghost
Summary: Assorted statements regarding a popular horror podcast, and the allegedly supernatural effects it has on its listeners.
Relationships: parasocial - Relationship
Comments: 8
Kudos: 34





	1. anon hate more like anon state(ments)

**Author's Note:**

> i can’t believe how much time i spent on this absolute ridiculousness. but it is entirely possible that i’m being controlled by supernatural forces so really it’s not my fault at all

[TAPE CLICKS ON]

ARCHIVIST

Assorted statements regarding...a horror podcast, and the allegedly supernatural effects it has on its listeners. Original dates of statements given vary, but as far as we can tell, appear to all be within the timeframe of January to April 2020. 

Archivist’s note: The following statements are all, unless otherwise specified, officially anonymous and undated. Additional information regarding the sources of these statements is addressed in the follow up. 

[STATEMENT]

Have you heard of The Magnus Archives? I suppose that would depend on what areas of the internet you frequent. I have never been particularly good at identifying how well known certain references or pieces of media are outside of my own personal circle of friends and acquaintances, but I suspect that if you ask in the right places, namely the social media site Tumblr, nearly everyone will have heard of The Magnus Archives. They may not know anything about it besides the name, but they sure will know the name. And what it did to those they followed, and even friends of theirs. 

_The Magnus Archives is a podcast distributed by rustyquill.com and is licensed under a creative commons attribution noncommercial share alike 4.0 international license._...That is...not what I meant to say. Though I suppose it is relevant. Believe me when I say that I can recite that sentence from memory, as can most of my friends who have also listened to said podcast. If you happen to be recording this, I bet you took a certain tone of voice reading it aloud, and didn’t even notice. 

Anyways, what I was trying to say is that _The Magnus Archives is a podcast dis_ —I mean, The Magnus Archives, which I from now on will be referring to as TMA, is a horror podcast…

[A/N: i was too lazy to write the statement giver’s description of tma’s premise. if you are here, you either already know, do not wish to know, or are perfectly capable of looking it up or asking a friend who knows.]

Right, so. Here’s the thing. The reason I’m making this statement. Everyone I know who gets into TMA is peer pressured into listening and then immediately becomes addicted and compelled to further peer pressure everyone they know into listening, even if only by the indirect means of never shutting up about it. It happened to me and I watched myself inflict it on others. Within a month of me starting the podcast, it seemed like my entire tumblr dash was TMA posts, and I had at that point never followed anyone with the intent of viewing TMA content. I wasn’t about to complain, exactly, as I was having a great time, but when the subject matter of the podcast is taken into account it all just seemed a little too perfect. 

I’m _telling_ you, there is something up here. The podcast is obviously linked to an entity. Not sure which one yet, as I have a couple theories as to what exactly the link is, but we are in the last season and if we don’t figure out what the deal is soon I’m certain episode 200 will culminate in the sacrifice of the listeners to an eldritch god, or something equally horrifying. Either the podcast is the means through which an avatar behind its creation is serving their god, making us the ultimate victims, or Jonathan Sims, the real one, is an entity in and of himself and by listening to the podcast you become an avatar and must expand its fanbase to feed him. Incidentally, this second theory ties in nicely with the theory that Jonathan Sims, the archivist one, as the Archive, is the ultimate entity himself. Either way, we are facing something big here, and need to take the warning that we are so graciously being handed for what it is. It’s entirely possible that even those who have been touched by the podcast indirectly (and trust me, it’s a lot of people) will end up suffering whatever fate awaits us at the end of season 5. 

[STATEMENT]

Look, I don’t care how good of a podcast TMA supposedly is. I’m sure it’s great, and I’d probably even like it. But no matter what happens, no matter how many mutuals I lose to it, I will not give in and listen, because that podcast is cursed. I don’t know if y’all just can’t see it, or just don’t care, but it’s so obvious what’s happening. Every goddamn day another mutual of mine starts listening to it, and then within a week they’ve changed their url and icon and I don’t even recognize them. Then they started answering asks that say “i started listening to tma because of you!” and I lose another one. I mean like, y’all seem to be having fun, so good for you I guess, but after blocking all relevant tags I can barely view my dash. And then there are y’all that don’t even tag your posts and I am just absolutely inundated by fanart of and posts about eyeballs man and murder grandma and some kind of sexy Bill Cipher wannabe. The point is, I absolutely refuse to fall into what is obviously a trap meant to take away my entire sense of identity and replace it with 2020’s version of sorting yourself into a Hogwarts house but oh, it’s okay and fun now because it’s horror archetypes, and isn’t that sexy. Yeah, I’m not buying that, nerds. I don’t know what the creator of this podcast’s end goal is, but as everyone who listens seems to have been peer pressured into it, and then immediately becomes addicted and begins peer pressuring others into listening to it, there’s clearly something going on, and it’s something I intend to have no part in. 

[STATEMENT]

literally everything i’ve learned about tma has been against my will

[STATEMENT]

i have scopophobia and you tma eye freaks are absolute shit at trigger tagging your art so like thanks for traumatizing me i hope you’re fucking happy. actually you probably are seeing as you all stan some evil all knowing fear god, or something. fuck you

[STATEMENT]

i asked my friend what trigger warnings applied to tma and they just said “all of them” and now i’m terrified what are y’all on 

[STATEMENT]

Right, so I’m on season 2 of TMA right now, and it’s good! I can’t listen to much of it at a time, though, and I can’t listen to it at all when I’m alone or it’s nighttime, but I suppose that’s the price of consuming horror media. I personally haven’t noticed any strange side effects, apart from the expected occasional bad dream, but my friend on the other hand...well. They’re another story. They’re the one that recommended the podcast to me, and they’ve always been a bit strange; that’s why I like them. Since starting TMA, though, they’ve been...more strange? It’s not entirely out of character, and quarantine does do odd things to people, but this has been going on since before quarantine, and the recent strangeness has been...very obviously TMA flavored. 

When they got impatient with the pace at which I was listening to episodes, they threatened to show up outside my house at night with a tape recorder. Which was probably a joke, but they sounded dead serious, and when I informed them I was actually staying at my dad’s girlfriend’s house, where they have definitely never been, they simply told me that they knew where it was, provided the exact address in case I had any doubts, and let me know that they would be there regardless. I don’t think they ever followed through, but just because I didn’t notice them doesn’t mean they weren’t there. 

And THEN, there’s the messages. I feel like Martin when he was trapped inside his flat by Prentiss. I can’t go outside, and I keep getting texts like “worms are cute and loving :)” “worms good” “worms are friends” “anyways, worms” “it’s worm time” “still worm time, babey!” “i just think you might be cranky because you don’t appreciate the benefits of having lots and lots of worms inside you” “worms don’t have a single mean bone in their body! in fact, they have no bones! only love and kindness and lovely dispositions” “physically, we should all become honeycomb” “you are a coward who has no respect for the loving nature of wiggling creatures. they burrow in your flesh because they love you. don’t you want support in this trying time? wouldn’t that soothe you aching soul?” I don’t think I need to elaborate on why it concerns me that my friend is becoming Jane Prentiss 2.0. Technically I haven’t seen them, so I don’t know that they _haven’t_ become a flesh hive, but I don’t think they have, somehow, I think they’re just...suddenly like this. I honestly would have never pegged them to be the type to want to be a Corruption avatar, yet here we are. 

Then! Then, the other day, after my most recent attempt to get them to _stop romanticizing Jane fucking Prentiss_ , they just? Started asking me questions? About what I’m afraid of? And I _told them?_ But they also asked me stuff like “What’s your favorite polygon?” and “How do you feel about skin? Does it need to be permanently attached?” and when I said yes, no unzipping, they simply inquired about _peeling like a fruit_ . They asked me for my fursona (I don’t have one, thanks), and how many bones I’d want to have, and what my _preferred birth date was_? You don’t? choose your birth date? I just. I don’t know. I’m at my wits end with these shenanigans. I can’t tell how much of it is joking or serious and I don’t know if I want to keep listening to this podcast if this is what it’s going to turn me into. 

[STATEMENT]

people will listen to the magnus archives and be like can’t help wanting to become a fear avatar!

[STATEMENT]

if i have to see one more tma reference i’m going to go feral, and like not what you cowardly white people think feral is, but actually feral. i will not hesitate to commit acts of unspeakable violence on all of you podcast freaks like a rabid fucking animal

edit: someone commented on this post “looks like someone’s been touched by the slaughter. or the hunt” and this is exactly what i’m talking about. i’d ask what the fuck that’s supposed to mean but i don’t actually want to know. like. am i a joke to you?!???!!?

[STATEMENT]

i don’t know anything about tma and at this point i’m too afraid to ask. on top of that i told my friend who listened to it this and they just smiled creepily at me and said “good. you should be.” why are y’all like this

[STATEMENT]

elias bouchard is wildly sexy. everything about him is incredibly hot. he has done nothing wrong except for possibly being _too_ sexy. peter lukas, who is also extremely sexy, is actually the most valid bitch around for tapping that

[STATEMENT]

Growing up, I was a huge scaredy cat. I was terrified of literally everything. I was scared by media that wasn’t even intended to be scary. I was scared of Care Bears. I was scared of scenes in My Little Pony. Don’t even get me started on the Twilight Zone. I couldn’t go to the children’s section of my local library because there was a decorative totem pole featuring a face that had really pointy teeth. I had to sleep with my lights on for months just because I read the Wikipedia page for The Children of the Corn. Obviously, I hated horror and avoided the genre like the plague. I don’t know when this changed, or what caused such a drastic shift, but that is now currently not even close to the case. 

When I was, hm, I’d guess 16? I watched the movie Coraline for the first time. I loved it and it immediately took the spot of my favorite film. To be fair, Coraline is animated, and doesn’t feature graphic gore, which definitely decreases the scare factor on my part. And I was 16, not 6. I can only assume that if I had watched it ten years prior it would have scared me out of my mind. Anyways, I watched the movie, I loved it, didn’t find it too scary to not be thoroughly enjoyable, and wrote it off as a fluke. 

I have still never seen an actual horror movie or read a horror novel. However, I am certainly no longer scared by the sort of fantasy scenes drawing on aspects of horror that terrified me as a child, and I can actually read the Wikipedia pages for various horror movies without giving myself nightmares. I attribute all of these developments to a natural increase in bravery that comes with growing older. But I really didn’t ever expect myself to be the sort of person to willingly engage with media labeled as “horror,” much less enjoy it. 

So I don’t really know why I started listening to The Magnus Archives. For every trend I give into, I avoid five more, and I don’t know why TMA didn’t fall solidly into the “avoid” category. The point is, I started listening to TMA. Unsurprisingly, I found the first few episodes frightening, but not so much so that I didn’t keep going, and I enjoyed it. I still enjoy it. I will confess to being one of those tumblr mutuals who suddenly became a TMA blog nearly overnight. Look, it’s just a really interesting story. That’s not the point I’m trying to make here, though. 

The point—and I can’t really pinpoint when this happened, only that it definitely happened—is that the podcast doesn’t scare me anymore. Which, okay, maybe that doesn’t sound that weird. We can get used to anything. Except my friend who I got into the podcast told me she can’t listen to when it’s dark, or when she’s home alone, and that she’s woken up in the middle of the night with bad dreams about certain episodes. I have listened to the podcast in the dark of my room at 4 am and not felt the slightest bit scared. I have not had a single bad dream about anything that happens. I have listened to graphic descriptions of people getting skinned and gored and melted without flinching. I have looked back at the list of trigger warnings and thought “how in the world did listening to that episode not majorly fuck me up?” _And I don’t know_.

Not only that, but the fears that I have apparently overcome in the context of the podcast also _don’t affect me in real life either_ . I’m not afraid of the dark, I think spiders are cute now, I even think the idea of being buried in the dirt or floating in the endless sky or filled with creepy crawly insects might be kind of nice, actually. I’m still paranoid as hell, but I don’t feel the need to hide as much as I used to. And I’ve liked slightly spooky stuff for a few years now (ghosts, clowns, bats, to name a few) but that was always in a distinctly “spooky-cute” sort of way. Nikola Orsinov and her freaky skin circus are absolutely not cute. I don’t know what the deal is, but I just...don’t feel fear now, apparently. I might go as far to say that I now _embrace_ what I logically know to be terrifying. And I _know_ it has something to do with this podcast. 

[STATEMENT]

yeah i love the podcast the magnus archives my favorite characters are *looks at smudged writing on hand* millicent, hole boy, and the giant crab

[STATEMENT]

the tma fandom has committed many crimes but the most egregious is definitely luring me in with the promise of good cows and canon gays only to TRAP me in a horror fear hellscape where everything is ALL TERRIBLE ALL THE TIME, and NOW i’m INVESTED in these characters that are all gonna DIE HORRIBLE DEATHS and make me SAD

[STATEMENT]

STOP telling me to listen to tma i can’t believe you all think i’m stupid enough to willingly sell my soul to a **_BRITISH_ ** _PODCAST_

[TAPE CLICKS OFF]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> statements were inspired by my own experiences, those of my friends, and various tumblr posts i’ve seen going around. if you recognize a statement as being lifted word for word from a tumblr post it’s either a post that i made or unintentional and due to fandom hivemind.


	2. you already know what’s going on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> statement of peter lukas, regarding his hatred for being a podcast character.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is mostly made up of material taken from the unofficial magpod transcript archive’s 2020 april fools day prank. therefore, pretty much all of this chapter bar the recontextualization is not really my work, and i absolutely do not wish to claim any credit, but the original is no longer published online, as it was, as stated, a prank. also, its use in the recontextualizing of this fic does serve a pretty important purpose in setting up the final chapter. if you have a problem with my usage of this material, please let me know _civilly_ and _politely_.

[TAPE CLICKS ON]

ARCHIVIST

This next statement actually has a name attached to it. It does not escape my notice, however, that said name is _Peter Lukas_. 

So uh...statement of Peter Lukas, I suppose, regarding...his, uh, his hatred for being a podcast character. Original statement given April 1, 2020. 

[STATEMENT]

I am being recorded. No, I don’t mean in the sense that I’m giving this statement, I mean that I, no, _we_ , are characters in a FUCKING podcast. We are being recorded as I give this statement, recorded by forces outside of, beyond, your Institute’s _precious_ Beholding, because we are characters in a _fucking horror podcast_ . How’s THAT for being Seen? To know that everything we do is being recorded for consumption as an audio drama by an audience _who knows_ how large? Forsaken’s fog, there could be thousands of them. [shudders]

Right, well, I digress. I do not know when I became aware of the fact that I am a podcast character, but it is the undeniable truth of the matter. I do not know why or how I know this, or what I am meant to do with this information. Knowing is not my domain. But I know that I am a podcast character. We are podcast characters. And I _hate_ being a podcast character. 

I do not want to be a character in a podcast. This is not something I agreed to! People are listening to me talk right now! On their phones and computers and—and _devices_ —CD players, maybe. I do not appreciate this, I never wanted to be in a podcast—did YOU agree to this? No? I don’t suppose any of us did. I simply cannot handle this situation, and I assume none of you can either. There was a nice young man actually, Brian? He had just given a statement when I came in, I believe. I sent him into the Lonely, of course, as being suddenly hurled into an alternate dimension is surely a better fate than being a podcast character. Listen, no one wants to be a character in a podcast. It was simply better that way. 

But the fact remains that I am a character in a podcast. You are a character in a podcast. Literally all of us, everyone in this world, are characters in a podcast. All of your statement givers? Died as they lived: as characters in a podcast. Nothing but pawns in a story controlled by the whims of an author far more powerful than any of the fears we serve. I’ll die too, you know. In the podcast. Perhaps I’ve already died. Exploded, maybe. Now wouldn’t _that_ be nice. When I blow up in your face, I will finally be free of the burden of being a podcast character. 

[sighs] At least people are focusing on their internal experience, not mine. But even passive listening or reading, experienced indirectly and at a great distance, is a form of human contact. How we respond to the stories we take in—critically or uncritically, with compassion or scorn for their feelings, with or without strong emotional attachment—is connected to how we relate to the stories of those around us. Identity is itself a story being told. Our feelings about fiction cannot be entirely separated from our feelings about the people around us. These feelings include fear, of course. How often have you felt fear before initiating an intimate conversation? That fear is similar to the fear we, as the characters in this _fucking horror podcast_ , instill in the podcast’s listeners. They await Thursdays with trepidation, fearing not another meat episode but **betrayal** , of the story not being the one they want it to be, of their relationship with it changing. 

[blinks and looks up, as if awakening from a daze] Look, I just want to stress how much I _hate_ being a podcast character. I don’t want to be in the podcast. My function is to be sad and cause problems, just like everyone else, in the podcast. As previously stated, I am not thrilled about this situation. I would like to be sad and cause problems at home, by myself. But no, I’m here at the institute, furthering the plot of this bloody fucking podcast. From my point of view, frankly, none of this has been any of my business. I don’t know about you, but I certainly have bigger concerns than this little office sitcom turned soap opera you call an Archives. For example, the fact that we are in a horror podcast. I _hate_ being a podcast character. I hope that when I explode, it splatters all over someone and ruins their clothes. 

I hate being a podcast character. 

ARCHIVIST

At this point, Mr. Lukas simply continues to repeat the phrase “I hate being a podcast character” for the remainder of his statement. As fascinating as it may be to some to hear me intone the sentence “I hate being a podcast character” 73 or so different ways, I really don’t fancy wasting the tape. 

Statement ends. 

[TAPE CLICKS OFF]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah that’s right i’m finally adding to this fic. just in time for the end of the podcast. there will be a final chapter and it’s gonna be meta as fuck and also hopefully something nice (?? in a weird metafictional way) in the face of The End

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [beholded](http://beholded.tumblr.com/) (main) or [thehouseathilltoproad](http://thehouseathilltoproad.tumblr.com/) (tma sideblog)


End file.
